Ann Richards

Hillary

Ann Richards had already lived a full life by the time she came anywhere near the world of professional politics. She grew up in Waco, Texas, during the Great Depression, raised by a tough-as-nails mother and a father who encouraged her to dream big. (“I have always had the feeling I could do anything, and my dad told me I could,” she would say. “I was in college before I found out he might be wrong.”) She stuck close to home, going to Baylor University to become a teacher, which she would later say was the hardest job she’d ever had. She later married her high school sweetheart—the two of them would stay up nights debating politics—and raised four children. Ann poured her energy, intelligence, and wicked sense of humor into going all-out for every holiday—baking recipes straight from the glossy pages of women’s magazines—and throwing herself into every political cause that came through town.

Like a lot of women, she started out behind the scenes: stuffing envelopes, making phone calls, and doing the hard, unglamorous work it takes to win over voters block by block and door by door. “In those days,” she liked to say, “men made the decisions and women made the coffee.” Her big break came when she got the chance to manage the campaign of Sarah Weddington for the state House of Representatives. At twenty-six years old, Sarah had argued Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court, legalizing abortion in America. Sarah won her election; Ann found her calling.

A few years later, local Democrats approached Ann’s husband, urging him to run for county commissioner. He turned them down and asked instead, “What about Ann?” She ran, won, and showed that not only could she do the job—she could do it better than anyone predicted. When she decided to run for state treasurer, it was the same story: People didn’t give her much of a chance, but she believed she could do it, and she never wavered. Her election sent ripples across the country. Suddenly, this funny, smart, tough woman had won a statewide position in Texas. People started to think: If it could happen there, it could happen anywhere.

Ann used to tell people she got into politics because she didn’t want her tombstone to read “She kept a clean house.” Instead, she went into government and cleaned house. She burst onto the national consciousness in 1988 with her extraordinary keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention. I was there on the floor and can attest that she had the entire convention—and the millions of people watching on television—in the palm of her beautifully manicured hand as she laid out a hopeful vision for Texas and America. Near the end of the speech, with her voice full of tenderness, she talked about her “nearly perfect” granddaughter. When she described sitting on the floor and rolling a ball back and forth with Lily, it didn’t matter who you were or where you were from; you were part of Ann Richards’s family. Decades later, and now a grandmother myself, that image is even more meaningful.

By the time she walked off the stage that night, people were calling for Ann to run for Congress or even the presidency. She launched a long-shot campaign for governor, tapping into a network of women, young people, and people of color across the state who had been shut out of the political process for too long. Her opponent was Clayton Williams, a good old boy businessman who joked about rape, who jabbed his finger in Ann’s face to try to intimidate her, and who refused to release his taxes. More than once during the 2016 election I wished I could call her up to commiserate! On Election Day in 1990, she became the first woman elected in her own right as governor of Texas.

Ann ran for governor, she said, “to open up the doors of government and let the people in.” And that’s just what she did. She appointed more women, Latinos, African Americans, and LGBTQ people than all of the state’s previous governors combined. I watched her governorship with great admiration because of her determination that everyone—no matter who you were or where you were from, no matter the color of your skin or your accent—could feel part of what she called “the new Texas.” She sent that message far and wide.

Ann faced every challenge head-on. She acknowledged something many of us, particularly in public life, are afraid to: that she was a human being, too. After her divorce, she knew her personal life would become the subject of public speculation. So she had a witty comeback for every insult and invasion of privacy. She talked openly about her struggle with alcoholism, and her hard-fought recovery. Because of her example, more people got sober, took charge of their lives, and even ran for office themselves. She made a difference not only in the lives of those who knew her, but countless others.

“The public does not… ask their public officials to be perfect. They just ask them to be smart, truthful, honest, and show a modicum of good sense.”

—ANN RICHARDS

In 1994, Ann lost her reelection campaign. In all the time I spent with her in the years after, I never heard any what-ifs, no could-haves or should-haves. It was all about the future, about her next adventure. “I have very strong feelings about how you lead your life,” she once said. “You always look ahead, you never look back.” Whenever I had a loss or setback in my own life, I knew just what she’d say to me: “Precious, get over it, and get on with it.”

Politics can be brutal. The partisan bickering, the gridlock, the mean-spirited attacks—they can take a toll. Ann laughed off the bad and embraced the good; she made public service a whole lot of fun. She was always there when you most needed her, a loyal friend in good times and hard times.

Ann was also a friend who could not resist giving you advice, whether you wanted it or not. In 1994, I went to South Texas for a rally to support her reelection. I gave a speech standing on the tarmac at an airport while the wind blew my papers all over the place. Afterward, Ann took me aside and said: “Hillary, this is called a speech box, and it keeps your papers from flying around. You need one of these. In fact, I am going to send you one, because I cannot bear to see how pathetic you look out there with those papers flying everywhere.” Sure enough, within a few days she had mailed me my very own speech box. Every time I use one—which is quite often—I think of where my first one came from, and of all the wisdom Ann shared with me over the years: “Never wear patterns on television”; “If you can’t remember somebody’s name, just call them ‘Honey’ ”; “If you’re going to be a woman in the public eye, you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble if you pick a hairstyle and stick with it.” I could have saved myself a lot of heartache if I’d followed that advice!

“If you give us a chance, women can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.”

—ANN RICHARDS

When I was considering whether or not to run for the Senate, I called Ann. She spoke plainly and from the heart, as she so often did. “Do you want to run?” she asked. “It has to be from deep inside you, not from what anybody else says. Do you want to do it? Do you want the job? Do you want the responsibility? Make it because you want it.”

When Ann died of cancer in 2006, it was hard to say goodbye. She still had so much good left to do. But the message she sent to so many other women still reverberates today: Set your own course, dream your own dreams, and go where you want to go, even if nobody has gone there before. That message lives on every day at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, an all-girls public school she started in Austin.

Ann paved the way for a new generation of public servants in Texas and across the country—including members of her own family. Her oldest daughter, Cecile Richards, embodies what it means to stand up and speak out. As the president of Planned Parenthood, she defended the organization against false and malicious attacks and helped build a powerful movement for reproductive rights. I’ll never forget watching her testify before Congress in 2015 after Planned Parenthood was the victim of a video smear campaign—a lot of “fake news.” For five hours, male members of Congress talked down to her and talked over her, criticizing her for everything from her salary to her attitude. Even though the experience smacked of sexism, she kept her cool the whole time; I thought of her a few weeks later when I spent my own eleven hours in front of some of the same people. After twelve years of extraordinary leadership at the helm of Planned Parenthood, Cecile has now turned her focus to starting a new organization, Supermajority, dedicated to building women’s power and civic participation. I know Ann would have loved that.

My friendship with Ann came full circle in 2015 when I launched my campaign for president. One of our very first hires was none other than the granddaughter she had talked about all those years ago, now a political powerhouse in her own right. I would come to learn that Lily Adams is every bit as funny, tough, and talented as her grandmother, with the same extraordinary gift for communicating a message that packs a punch.

Now more than ever, we could use Ann’s moral compass, her guts, and her boundless empathy. But if she were here, I know just what she’d tell us: Open up every door that is blocked, remember where you came from, and don’t ever forget that others want to come along with you. She would tell you that not only can you break that barrier or reach that glass ceiling—you have to. There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it. You just had to get up, get going, and believe in yourself.